Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Not much to choose from for X, but as I am a life-long "incomer", it's Xenophobia that strikes a chord.

Here is a poem about it -

We and They

Father, Mother, and Me,Sister and Auntie sayAll the people like us are We,And everyone else is They.And They live over the sea,While we live over the way,But - would you believe it? - They look upon WeAs only a sort of They!

We eat pork and beefWith cow-horn handled knives.They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,Are horrified out of Their lives;While They who live up a tree,And feast on grubs and clay,(Isn't it scandalous?) look upon WeAs a simply disgusting They!

We shoot birds with a gunThey stick lions with spears.Their full-dress is un-,We dress up to Our ears.They like Their friends for tea.We like Our friends to stay;And, after all that, They look upon WeAs an utterly ignorant They!

We eat kitcheny food.We have doors that latch.They drink milk or blood,Under an open thatch.We have Doctors to fee.They have Wizards to pay.And (impudent heathen!) They look upon WeAs a quite impossible They!

All good people agree,And all good people say,All nice people, like Us, are WeAnd everyone else is They:But if you cross over the sea,Instead of over the way,You may end by (think of it!) looking on WeAs only a sort of They!

Rudyard Kipling.

Looking forward to another year of war, conflict and hate? Or peace and happiness? We all have choices and the ability to learn.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

This pattern was published in the latest knitty, and it appealed to me, so I made it, using some sock yarn that was never going to become socks.

Yes, it's a hat, and it is supposed to look like a dead fish. The yarn used is pretty much the right sort of colour for a bear's leftovers, in my imagination (not being terribly familiar with long-dead fish).

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

This is Maude Edwards, Lady Ventriloquist, with her doll, the little stable boy.

Maude was born in 1886 in Corporation Street, Birmingham, the sixth of eight children of a Horse Keeper (and reputed former jockey). You don't see many horses round there nowadays.

She made her stage debut in 1905, trained and managed by her older brother Tom Edwards, also a ventriloquist, and later a successful theatrical manager. In October 1906 she sailed to the US, where she toured American Music Halls until May 1907. At some point after her return, she decided that brother Tom was taking too large a slice of her earnings, and sued him in the High Court. She won her case, with costs, causing another of the family's well-known "all-fired" rows, and of course a huge rift between the siblings.

She worked in Music Halls in many places, and often toured the North-East of England. She met James Cameron, a singer in a group called The Cameron Quartette (3 Cameron brothers, sometimes with a 4th brother, and sometimes with a friend). They were married in St. Nicholas' Cathedral, Newcastle, early in 1910, and later that year their only child was born in Whitley Bay - they were still on tour.

World War 1 interrupted James' career; he was on the way home from a successful tour of Australia when war broke out. He served in the Royal Flying Corps.

Radio killed off the Music Halls, of course, and Maude retired from the stage. Until about 1940 they lived in Brixton, which was a popular place with theatrical folk in the first half of the 20th century.

Much later, after James died (on Christmas Day, 1955), Maude went to live in a retirement home for former stage folk, a home which was run by the Order of Water Rats (a charity organised by people involved in variety), and funded partly by the Royal Variety Performance. She died in 1976.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

This is an entirely knitting-orientated posting, so if you're not interested, look away now.

The next jersey is in the planning stage, and this one is going to be my first one with steeks. Yes, knitting in the round to the shoulders, then cutting the knitting to make armholes, and probably a front placket too.

So, instead of knitting a whole jersey, then experimenting with that, I picked up an idea online, and made a sample.

The sample is worked in the round (trying out a few stitch patterns at the same time) and I closed the top with a 3 needle bind off to replicate a jersey shoulder. Most of the instructions on steeking tell you to machine stitch on each side of the proposed cut, but I really didn't want to do that, as the machine stitching would be a completely different tension and feel from the knitting. I reckoned that if I cut each pair of threads, and then knotted them together, that would prevent any unravelling - logical, but would it be practical?

Yes, it worked fine. There are an awful lot of ends to tidy up, but it's a possible solution. Actually, I have a striped cardigan with an awful lot of ends (2 row stripes in many different colours), and I just cut them and left them as fringes down the insides of the seams , and that's fine, so I could just leave the ends to felt slowly together.

But then I stumbled on a paragraph in "The Best of Interweave Knits, Our Favorite Designs from the First Ten Years", in a jersey design by Ron Schweitzer. It suggests casting on 10 extra stitches to make the steek, then cutting down between the 5th and 6th stitches, picking up the stitches for the sleeve/neckband from the first and last extra stitches, then finishing the steek by folding back the cut edges, trimming if you want, and sewing them down on the inside with cross stitches. This is very easy, very tidy, and very secure. And as it's all done with the knitting yarn, there is no tension or materials conflict.

I picked up and knitted a few rows of stocking stitch.

And this is the inside - the right hand side was cross-stitched in black, so then I did the left side with white, so that in future I can see how I did it. You will observe that the stitching is not as neat as it might be, but hey! it's only a working sample!

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Underfoot - one of my favourite photo categories. Subjects are close at hand, and often stationary. And the most amazing, beautiful, and interesting things can often be found right under your nose.

This is stitchwort (whose name I borrowed for blog purposes), a wayside and woodland flower which blooms at the same time as bluebells and red campion, sometimes offering the chance of red, white, and blue flowers in one photo -

Walks along the sea-shore provide unexpected shapes and endless patterns in the sand -

And in the forest, rocks beside the path can prove fascinating, decorated with lichens -

While back in the garden, some of the trees simply throw photo opportunities at you -

Monday, December 08, 2008

Snow, ice, freezing wind, pavements like skating rinks, shops crowded with festive shoppers - how much pleasanter to stay at home and dye some yarn.

Using the sample packs of Landscape dyes I bought recently from Wingham Wool Work, I dyed some Shetland plus 3 skeins of BFL, with excellent results.

Most of the skeins are done as "semi-solid", i.e. one colour shading across the skein; the 3 BFL skeins are done with 2 different dyes - they are the creamy beige, the blue-grey, and the 2-tone sweet-pea pink.

And to brighten the day still further, here are pictures of a modular bag (both sides), which I finished a couple of days ago - just the right size for a knitting project in progress.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

They are essential to me - in the garden, on walks, and as part of a view. They are part of so many of my photos that it's hard to choose just a few. My albums are full of leaves, buds, bark, oaks, maples, hawthorns, beech and birch.

The bluebell woods in May -

And a most inviting path in September -

August farmland -

These sunlit leaves were my desktop picture for a long time -

And this totally out-of-focus shot is my current desktop picture (it's even more blurry in big) -